Tuesday, December 12, 2006

The Broadcast Film Critics Association nominations have begun. Their top ten list is out. You can see it here. It's similar to other lists we've been seeing which is totally fine. Several of these are good films. In a mediocre year top ten lists are going to be more similar than usual. But the inclusion of Blood Diamond raises the eyebrow. Why? Because they just saw it?

And although I'm no fan of Flags of Our Fathers, its omission is another sign of the BFCAs strange inability to take themselves seriously enough to warrant us taking them seriously. As a collective they're always willing to throw integrity out the window if the Oscar tide turns against something they loved. Flags was among their six highest rated movie of the year with a 92 point score. It also beat both Babel and The Departed to be named their winning film for the month of October. Now, it's not on their list? What's more it's omitted in favor of a film like Blood Diamond which scored only an 82, a full 10 point drop. Huh? This group rated all of the following: Borat, Volver, Cars, Superman Returns, Casino Royale, The Last King of Scotland, and World Trade Center above Blood Diamond.

more bitching about their nominations hereNext big event: The Golden Globe nominations on Thursday.

In the acting categories - yay for DiCaprio x2, Affleck and Barraza. Shame they went 6 wide for those three categories, as I'm guessing the ones to not make the final 5 in the supporting races are Affleck and Barazza - which is a shame as they're both more than worthy.

Pitt snub is rather upsetting - probably means he's out now. The Globes will nom him but that won't mean much being the starfuckers that they are (I love them for it though!). I'm hoping to see Scarlett make it in with them again!

I think that will be our Best Actress line-up for the Oscars - all fantastic (I'm guessing with Dench/Winslet as I've yet to see, but from what I hear) except for Streep. Liked her performance but it's been wildly overrated. Walters, Huppert and Binoche deserve it over her.

I hate the BFCA. They are the worst of the worst. People like to complain about the NBR, but at least they have some balls to actually give their best film prize to their favourite (Quills, Gods & Monsters, Moulin Rouge!, Finding Neverland for example, and I believe they awarded Citizen Kane as BP back in the day) -

but this group is a horrible disgusting waste of space. Recently over at the Hot Blog Dave Poland has actually been complaining about pre-cursors for not resembling Oscar enough and thus becoming irrelevent.

It's pathetic and I make sure that Poland knows it every chance I can. There's really no way to defend this lot.

How great would it be if Daniel Craig received a nomination for Casino Royale? Critics everywhere admit that one of main reasons that movie was successful was due to Daniel Craig's polished performance. Actors in big-budget movies have in the past, though rarely, received Oscar noms. The one that comes to mind is Johnny Depp for Pirates.

Re: Howard Shore's score for The Departed. I remember it. I also vaguely remember that his score for The Aviator was disqualified because the film relied to heavily on non-original music. I would imagine Departed's score would be disqualified for similar reasons.

Anon, Casino Royale won't go anywhere with awards. They're all too busy masturbating on Martin Scorsese for doing exactly what CR does, just with a bigger cast, more swearing and less interesting locations.

About David Poland I only can say he's one of the most hypocrite columnists around. He certainly has attacked on the NBR, the AFI, and the Satellites for being too irrelevent, when in fact he shouln'd be doing this, he himself a member of another organization that lives for predicting the Oscars. At least other groups kind of have their own minds!

Blood Diamond comes as no surprise since they've always nominated turkeys. Last year was Memoirs of a Geisha.

The good thing about the critics awards (NOT the BFCA) is that they only pick ONE WINNER per category. Essentially, they're picking whoever the hell they want to and they don't have to pick 10 films just to star gaze as many celebrities as possible that come to their awards show galas.

Blood Diamond was TERRIBLE. I wanted to see Jennifer Connelly shot in that movie, that's how bad it was for me. Painful.

I do love the Scorsese love though, sorry Kamikaze. And on a related note on really good films, Little Children won the San Francisco critics. Except for the Helen Mirren victory, it's a pretty eclectic line up.

Don't you think Jackie Haley (something?) has a legitimate shot at Oscar? He was absolutely riveting in this film and his character still creeps the shit out of me.

Nat - did you already see Water? I saw it, and I found it to be really heartbreaking, almost to an excessive point, but it's one of the better Hindi films out there. It's kind of sad that Oscar doesn't go for the big Bollywood musical that much - I mean, at least for Best Original Song?

Brad Pitt may still get a nomination, if not for Supp Actor - the FYC ads for The Departed list him as one of the 3 producers.

Also, although it's early days, weird that no group's singled out Ken Watanabe yet for Letters. Will the Academy still nominate him for Actor, despite the lack of precursor love (so far), as they did for Eastwood in M$B?

I love Scorsese too and I liked The Departed, but I didn't think it was anything else than an action thriller with a glorious cast and directed by a legend, so naturally people jumped and started claiming it was the best movie of the year because it meant they could look high brow and low brow. "An action movie with guns and fist fights was the best movie of the year! ...but it was directed by Scorsese so it's not embarassing".

I honestly don't think it's as deep as some people are giving it credit for.

"I love Scorsese too and I liked The Departed, but I didn't think it was anything else than an action thriller with a glorious cast and directed by a legend"

Is it just me or I smell some snobbish attitude? Some of the greatest crimes in the Academy history precisely came to pass because of their hideous bias against genre films. "Oh it's just a comedy" "Good horror but nothing else".

There's nothing more cinematic than the film genres. And both the Oscars and the GGlobes tend snub most of them.